Churches in Venice

There are 10 churches in this sestiere which was named for an 8th century church that was demolished in the 19th century; a granite column and piece of that church’s wall can be found today in the Papadopoli Gardens.

San Giacomo dall’Orio is my favorite campo in Venice, and I love its church a lot, both inside and out. It looks so ancient from the outside but is surprisingly elegant inside with a nice collection of art. San Zan Degola is a sweet little church with some frescoes that might be the oldest works of art in the city; formerly Catholic, this church has recently switched to Russian Orthodox.

Santa Maria Mater Domini is one of my very favorites – a small and very charming church with some gorgeous paintings including the one on the right (The Vision of Santa Christina) by the mysterious Venetian painter Vincenzo Catena. More about him later.

Chorus Pass churches are San Giacomo dall'Orio and San Stae.

An ancient and strangely charming church with much to see, including fossils! This is one of my very favorites; I love the church but I also love the campo, having stayed in a great apartment here on two of my trips. My favorite restaurant (La Zucca) is in this neighborhood along with my favorite wine bar (Al Prosecco), and I’ve spent many happy hours sitting in the campo drinking Prosecco and watching the neighborhood while looking at the back of this great old church.

Yesterday I wrote about finding fossils in the floor of San Giacomo dall’ Orio.
That was the first church where I saw one and I’ve since spotted them in several other churches. I don’t always remember to look for them (sometimes I get distracted by the art and architecture!) but when I do remember, I almost always find at least one. They are usually embedded in the red marble and look like big swirly shrimp. They are so fascinating to me.

In December, I found fossils in San Canciano (the one in the photo is from that church), Santa Maria Formosa, San Francesco della Vigna, and even in the Salute. I wonder if marble with a fossil in it was more valuable, back in the days when they were building these churches?

There’s just something so satisfying about finding them. It’s the same feeling I’d get as a kid when we’d look for four-leaf clovers out in the yard - it feels lucky! And yes, I realize that I probably look like a dork walking around a magnificent church staring at the floor. :)

Another part of it is that these churches all seem so ancient and holy to me, and they make me think about time (and long passages of time), and then the fossils connect it all back even further to pre-history.

Of course, “ancient” is relative….everything in Venice seems so old to me but I’m coming from the American perspective. Here in the USA, a church or building that’s 100 years old is “historic” while a church the same age in Italy would be considered “modern.” But the fossils are ancient no matter what.

This lovely Early Renaissance church is another one of my favorites. It’s small and elegant and feels like a place that’s been much loved by many generations of grandmothers, plus it has one of my very favorite paintings in Venice.

Santa Maria Mater Domini is located close to the campo of the same name, but the church isn’t visible from the campo itself. This part of Venice is very densely built, and it would be easy to walk by the church without even noticing it if you weren’t looking up. You can see the campanile from the middle of the campo, but you have to go down a narrow calle to see the façade and entrance to the church. The campo contains some of the oldest remaining Byzantine buildings in the city – look for the windows and the Byzantine reliefs embedded in the brickwork of the houses in the campo.

A church that’s now part of Venice’s prison, this one’s got an interesting history with not one but two miracle-working Madonna legends.

In the 1400’s, this was a remote and poor fishing neighborhood on the western shore of Venice and then an old hermit and the locals began seeing the Madonna and Child walking on the water of the canals. This happened often enough that a Franciscan nun named Caterina asked the Senate for permission to build a church here in honor of the Virgin’s miraculous visitations. The first church (built in 1497) was small and made of wood, and then someone gave the church a miracle-working Madonna icon brought to Venice from Greece, and the icon was another attraction that drew people to this area and this church.

So the miracles continued and donations poured in, and the church we see today was built in 1503-1514 along with a convent. Interesting that this all happened shortly after the Miracoli was built under similar circumstances in another part of town. Tuilio Lombardo might have been the architect of this church too, which was modeled on a church of the same name in Rome.

The convent grew from 12 nuns to hundreds, many of them noblewomen from wealthy Venetian families. It became an important religious center and the church was decorated with some great art, but the convent was not without scandal. At some point in the 1500’s the prioress had an affair with a priest from San Stae; they were caught and she was banished to Cyprus (but what happened to the priest?!).

San Zan Degola is located in a small campo of the same name, and this is one of those magical places in Venice where you feel like you’ve traveled back in time. There are no other tourists, no glass or mask shops, no indication whatsoever that you are in modern times. And the church itself is charming and wonderful with rediscovered frescoes that might be the oldest works of art in the city.

The church dates back to the 8th, 9th, or 10th century (sources vary). It’s possible that it was originally an oratory that became a parish church in 1007. Regardless, it’s definitely one of the oldest churches in Venice, and it’s one that hasn’t changed much despite various restorations over the centuries. In 1994, the church was restored and reopened after having been closed for over two decades, and it’s now the church for Venice’s Russian Orthodox community.

The church is dedicated to St. John the Baptist aka St. John the Beheaded (San Giovanni Decollato) which morphs into San Zan Degola in Venetian dialect. There’s a curly-haired stone relief of the martyred saint’s head on the outside of the church.

This very small and very sweet church is Veneto-Byzantine in style with a plain brick façade and a nice campanile in the back. The interior is simple with Greek marble columns with 11th c. Byzantine capitals and a gothic wooden ship’s keel ceiling.

The highlights of this church are the ancient frescoes that were unearthed during restoration. It’s unusual for frescoes to survive the damp and salt air of Venice, so seeing these is very cool. There’s an image of Saint Helena, an Annunciation, and a particularly nice image of Archangel Michael standing on a dragon.

This isn’t one of my favorite churches in Venice by any stretch, but one of my best and most memorable church VISITS was to this one because of the big surprise I found inside when I went for the first time. One of the few churches on the Grand Canal, this is the place to come for 18th century Venetian painting and if you are lucky (like me), some modern art too.

This church is dedicated to San Eustachio (St. Eustace) who, in the quirky world of the Venetian dialect, morphed into San Stae. San Eustachio was a second century Roman general who was out hunting one day and saw a vision of Christ in between a stag’s antlers, so he converted to Christianity, endured a bunch of Job-like trials, and was eventually martyred.

The church often hosts temporary art exhibits and concerts (it’s known for great acoustics) and is also one of the exhibition sites for the Biennale, Venice’s famous biannual extravaganza of contemporary art from around the globe.

There are a bunch of churches in Venice that look so beautiful from the side or back but not so hot from the front, and this is one of them. Jan Morris (The World of Venice) wrote, “The back of San Nicolo da Tolentino looks like an Edwardian battleship, with barbettes, bulwarks, flying bridges, and catwalks” so in December, I went to check and took the photo above. I have no clue what she’s talking about, maybe because I’ve never seen an Edwardian battleship, but I think the church is lovely from this angle with that pinkish glow and nice campanile. The façade is a different story.

After the Sack of Rome in 1527, many refugees fled to the safety of Venice including the Theatine Order (which included a future saint and a future pope). They settled in an oratory and then later in the century, built this church (1591-1602).